Come on, Dave, it's not far from what I see in the picture as well. I'm not learning by hearing "nice picture". If I want to improve I have to cope with critic as well - and Studor13's critic was far away from unfriendly.
Firstly, I want to say that I am not criticizing Toni’s current photographic skills because the original shot was over 10 years ago.
I have far worse shots than this from 2006.
But if you recall my first post I said that Toni was better off just enjoying the scenery and sea air rather than re-working this composition.
The main reason I said this was because although I live near the mountains I am familiar with this type of coastline. It is near impossible to get a decent foreground anchor to work with.
In the original image, one part of the foreground is quite nice but the rock formation on the right is the type that we have all over the place here (and down the Croatian coast). You can not make these types of rocks in the foreground “workâ€. They just don’t have the structure/fibre to make themselves look good in a photo.
There are other technical issues but the main problem is that it is very difficult to get a seascape shot to work if you don’t have a good foreground to start with and that your background is combined with a town AND a sky.
You are better off to have no foreground but just have a bit of water, town and sky. This way, the town lights are bigger and brighter and there will be more details in the structure of the buildings.
If the weather helps will be redoing this picture saturday and maybe tomorrow afternoon, just before sunset the light is pink/orange and that might be interesting for the snow, will retry to take it without the stony foreground.
Negative or positive feedback, it doesn't matter, it is all about sharing the knowledge and improving, this was taken when I was at my beginnings with digital photography, in fact this set was the second time I shoot RAW, I had my first DSLR for barely one month, great memories, let's see how will I improve with my shooting. will give you feedback as soon as I retake the shot,